Sunday, July 29, 2012

With the album hanging by its fingernails on the edge of a cliff while the digital download stomps all over it, now seemed as good of a time as any to compile a list of the rock canon, in 50 discs' worth of music. These aren't necessarily my favorite discs as they are an attempt to reach "the" essential discs, whatever that means.

The task was to strike a balance between the artist & the album; thus, I compiled most of the lists in sets of 5—if I get only 5 more discs, what would they be?—& continued until I got up to 50. In this regard, it was a bit like a "desert island" list, with each new set allowing it to grow outwards one more layer.

Overall, it's definitely slanted towards the older (none of this music was issued after 1991 & none of these albums were released after 1994), but that only seemed appropriate—if this the canon where everything came from, it would be counterintuitive to also expect the list to be contemporary. To this end, I stuck with the "most classic" editions of the albums, including modern substitutes if it has gone out of print.

Finally, for the reviews, I stuck within a 140-character "tweet-size" review/statement/headline to get a one-sentence gist of what it was doing here. When it came down between an album & an artist, I usually went with bigger artist as opposed to the "better" album.

So here's the list in rough "essential" order, from most essential to least, The 50 Essential Rock Discs, "50 Sleeves Of Great."

1.The
Beatles: 20 Greatest Hits [US]. A history – of the Beatles, of the 1960s,
of modern rock & roll – in 20 number-one American hits.